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Parliamentary panel asks Centre to take steps to ensure quality assurance, supply chain management for medicinal plants
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Gireesh Babu, New Delhi
April 17 , 2023
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The Union Ministry of Ayush should take concrete steps to ensure quality assurance, supply chain and creating and optimising market linkages along with value addition for medicinal plants in the country through the Central sector scheme of ‘Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants’, opined a panel of parliamentarians in their latest report.
The panel also sought the Ministry to take steps to improve the physical performance of the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB), and recommended the Board to conduct more buyer-seller meets among the farmer bodies, industries and State and Union Territories.
The Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, headed by Member of Parliament Bhubaneswar Kalita, in a latest report on the demands for grants of the Ministry of Ayush for the year 2023-24, said that it is of the view that Ministry should take concrete steps to ensure quality assurance, supply chain and creating/optimizing market linkages and value addition in the scheme for Conservation, Development and Sustainable Management of Medicinal Plants.
The Committee observed that there is a provision for supporting the projects on quality assurance for maintaining good standards while collecting, cultivating and post-harvest handling of the raw material.
“In this regard, the Committee recommends the Ministry to ensure effective implementation of Voluntary Certification Schemes for Medicinal Plants produce (VCSMPP) to encourage Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) and Good Field Collection Practices (GFCP) in medicinal plants and enhance quality and safety of these plants,” added the report.
The scheme has been implemented by the NMPB, which has seen a marginal increase of Rs. 0.63 crore in budget allocation for the year 2023-24 as compared to the Revised Estimates for the year 2022-23.
The primary mandate of NMPB is to develop an appropriate mechanism for coordination between various ministries/departments/ organizations in India and to implement support policies/programmes for overall (conservation, cultivation, trade and export) growth of medicinal plants sector both at the Central/State and International level NMPB provides market linkage to the farmers/collectors involved in cultivation/collection of medicinal plants. The detailed requirements from major companies (along with contact details of person from purchase department) is shared with all State Implementing Agencies and others supporting cultivation of medicinal plants.
The Committee recommended the Ministry to take concrete steps to improve the physical performance of NMPB, in order to achieve its mission objective, which remains short of target set for 2021-22 and 2022-23 on almost all counts. While the target fixed for the NMPB for the year 2021-22 was to set up 25 R&D projects, it has achieved only 11, and out of the five projects on capacity building, IEC nursery and others, only two has been counted as achieved as on March 31, 2023.
While the target was for in-situ (on-site)/ex-situ (off-site) conservation on 1,500 hectares of medicinal plants, it has achieved only around 1,000 hectares. While it targeted to set up one raw drug repository in 2021-22, no such repository was set up during the year.
“The Committee believes that the introduction of forward and backward linkage in the supply chain of medicinal plants (Integrated component) would help the farmers by providing Quality Planting Material (QPM) and Post-harvest management infrastructure,” added the report.
Referring to the NMPB’s online portal cum android based application for trading of medicinal plants named 'e-CHARAK, it recommended that the Board should chalk out a strategy to enable trading and information exchange amongst various stakeholders involved in the medicinal plants sector.
“The Committee further recommends NMPB to organize frequent buyer-seller meet among the farmer bodies, industries and state/UT government on challenges faced and way forward which may include discussion on medicinal plants cultivation and supply chain management,” it added. The panel further said that it is of the considered view that Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav Campaign by NMPB, to promote the medicinal plants sector in the Country, would give impetus to the campaign “Ayush Aapke Dwaar” to create awareness on medicinal plants.
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